


Hidden Talents

by Chibihaku



Series: Kalasin Lavellan [2]
Category: Dragon Age (Video Games), Dragon Age: Inquisition
Genre: F/M, Five And One, Fluff, I despise tagging my own work, One Shot
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-05-26
Updated: 2015-05-26
Packaged: 2018-04-01 10:50:14
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,610
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4016932
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Chibihaku/pseuds/Chibihaku
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Bull's not much of an artist, but his work calls him to sketch a little bit.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Hidden Talents

The first time that Bull sketches the Inquisitor, it’s shortly after their first meeting.

The meeting, like most of his meetings go, was short and brutal. She’d joined him in a fight that was more brawl than skirmish, and the first time he’d seen her she’d been little more than a red smudge on the hillside. She came down to him, joined in the fight, and after that - well, the Vints hadn’t stood a chance.

She was the sort of fighter who won because she could be everywhere and nowhere at once, one instant she was next to him, burying her blade in the back of a swordsman’s neck, the next, she was on the other side of the beach, pulling the feet out from under an archer.

And from that first fight, he found himself surprised by how well they worked together. She kept close track of where her allies were and what they were doing, didn’t ever seem to make herself a hindrance, but was always right where she needed to be if he needed someone lured away from him so that he had more room to do what he did best. 

Despite himself, he was impressed.

Especially given what a tiny thing she turned out to be. 

She’d questioned him when the fight was over, after seeing what he could do. There was a certain quickness to her eyes that hinted at intelligence, and the way that she sat, let him do most of the talking while she listened told Bull that she was used to being on the edge of conversations, rather than at the centre. 

Oh, and she was polite, too, perfectly so. Didn’t say a single rude word or express a single discomfort. She complimented him on his blade work, asked her companions for their opinions and weighed each in turn, before finally (graciously) accepting his offer of blade-for-hire. It was the sort of polite that acted as a defense mechanism, and it made him wonder whether it was distrust or simple caution that kept him at arms length. 

When he asked her about herself, she didn’t dance around his questions, - dancing would be too obvious, too attention-seeking - she merely let the question wash over her, let most of the content pass her by, wove together the rest and gave it back to him in a way that stopped him from probing more fully and left him wholly unsatisfied with what she was saying. Anyone else probably wouldn’t have noticed what she was doing, would probably have thought that the answer was satisfactory until they thought about it later and found it wholly lacking. 

He decided near immediately that he liked her - if for the challenge she presented and nothing more.

So he told her he was Ben Hassrath, joked about it even, just to see what she would do, and her reaction was just as bland and as intentionally hard to read as her others had been. But this time, after she spoke, he saw the edge of her lips lift in the tiniest of smiles, she met his eye and one of her eyebrows quirked, and the invitation to play her game was there as surely as if she’d asked him outright.

And he knew - whatever she was now, she’d been a spy before.

And so now, he was sketching her because she’d gone off to do some other things on the Coast and he and the boys were headed back to her base of operations. He had written down his preliminary thoughts, but found his description of her lacking, because she was a strange thing to describe. 

He didn’t really have any artistic talent, but anyone who practices can eventually produce a suitable likeness, and a spy wouldn’t be much of a spy if they couldn’t do that much at least. 

He tries to capture the fall of her hair, the shape of her eyes, the sweeping vallaslin that are tattooed across her cheekbones. 

“I don’t know, Chief,” said Krem, standing at his shoulder, “I think the break in her nose was on the other side.”

Bull grinned down at his second. “And as you’re not the man with the spy training here, I think I’ll go with my interpretation.”

“Bet you first round at the next bar.”

“Accepted.” Bull slapped him on the shoulder, then went back to putting small details on his sketch. Freckles, she’d had them, light and faint on her olive skin, all over her face. And he was pretty sure that the wound she’d gotten in the fight, the long one that ran up from her lip over her cheek, was going to leave a scar so he added that in too. “I really hope you never stop trying to bet against me, Krem, I hate paying for my own drinks.”

—

The second time he drew the Herald, they were in the Hinterlands. 

It was starting to fall to dusk so they’d set up camp for the night, and the Herald was currently up a tree, bow drawn. He did a quick figure study, because the dalish have a slightly different bow technique depending on the clan they’re from, and the qunari know next to nothing about the individual clans. It was all messy, no definition yet, and he tucked it away to finish later before he wandered over to the base of her tree. 

She let an arrow fly.

Some distance away, there was a squeal and the rustle of a small body tumbling through undergrowth. Something small and satisfied flitted across the Herald’s mouth as she dropped out of the tree, landing gently on the ground.

When she saw him, she didn’t quite startle, but she blinked and her brow crinkled a moment before she could smooth it. The expression was gone nearly as fast as it had appeared, but Bull let her see a touch of his amusement at the prospect.

She recovered swiftly. “It looks like we’ve got more than dried rations tonight.” She said, as she stepped past him, disappearing off into the sparse woodlands a moment. 

He waited for her to appear again before speaking, tilting his chin at the dead nug in her hands. “You’ll need more than one of those to feed me.”

She grinned at him. “Is that so?” She asked, tilting her head. The nug was thrust into his arms and he took it from sheer surprise. “In that case, help me back into that tree and then go get that one ready, would you?”

From anyone else it could have sounded like a request, but from her it was a damn-near demand, and he found himself amused by the idea of it. “Why not just stay on the ground to shoot?”

“I would, if you shems could be trusted not to follow me.” Her arms folded across her chest, her lips settled into what was almost, almost, a smirk. “You’re so loud you scare off all the game before we’re anywhere near close, so my only solution is to go higher if I want to be able to bag anything.”

“Now, that was almost rude.”

“It was rude, you know it.” She said in return, unabashed. “Help me back into that tree.”

So he did, let his hand slip a little too high up her thigh by accident, just to see what she’d do.

Her foot hitting his face was something she apologised profusely for, but he was pretty sure it was entirely on purpose.

He went back to his sketch, grinning slightly, because he liked her a little bit more when her guard was relaxed.

—

The third time is about a week after the second, when they’d hiked all the way to Master Dennet’s to make arrangements for the Inquisition to get horses. The day had been hard - they’d started by clearing off wolves that had settled near the farmlands, followed by marking places for the Inquisition to build watchtowers, and they’d finished on the absolutely thrilling note of bringing one very lost druffalo back to a farmer who couldn’t thank them enough. By the end of that one, even the Boss had become very thoroughly strained, her polite smile a little bit more fixed than usual, her posture a little bit more rigid.

The horsemaster had put them up on the bottom floor of his homestead as thanks for the work of the day, and had promised them his aid and finest horses in the morning. His wife had even cooked them a hearty meal, and by the time they managed to turn in (because apparently putting a little bit of liquor into the horsemaster’s wife turned her into something of a storyteller and the Boss was content to play the perfect guest and listen to each tale and ask. Questions.) he was tired enough to sleep for a damn week.

They’d all settled into their bedrolls and drifted off to sleep, and when Bull had awoken the next morning, the Boss had been missing.

He swore quietly, slipping into his armour and strapping his sword onto his back as quickly as he was able. He wrote down a quick note for the Seeker and Solas, before he left the homestead at a fast clip, craning his head about for any sign for where the Boss could have gone. 

And then he heard it, a laugh like bright bells, coming from near the stables, and he felt like just a little bit of an idiot. 

He followed the sound, crossing a druffalo paddock where one of the beasts looked balefully up at him for a moment before going back to chewing on the grass. He found the Boss at the farm’s large stables, and promptly had to hide his surprise.

She was sitting astride a chestnut mare, skillfully taking it through a series of tight dressage steps as Dennet’s daughter watched on. The Boss made the horse prance a tight circle, laughing for joy at the animal’s easy response, leaning forward and scratching it just behind it’s ears. She muttered something to it that Bull couldn’t hear, but the cadence of her voice was so affectionate, and her expression so joyful, that he just leant on the fence post in front of him and just watched on a moment more.

There was no careful distance in her, he realised as he watched, no restraint as she made the horse go through a few more quick exercises.

“It’s a war horse, Boss,” He called, at last, to let her know he was here, “Not a show pony.”

“She’s beautiful, is what she is.” The Boss corrected him, without even turning to look, confirming what Bull had suspected. She’d known he was at the fence post, but had decided that his presence there wasn’t a concern to her, wasn’t a reason to change her behaviour. 

She made the horse trot over to him, and the animal put it’s face against Bull’s chest, making a slight ‘whuff’ as it took his scent. He put his hand on the white blaze in the centre of it’s face, petting it gently. 

“She’s enormous.” Said the Boss,sounding delighted by the prospect. “Halla don’t usually get anywhere near this large, even the biggest of them.”

The other woman joined them by the fence, slapping the chestnut’s flank. “You control her very well for someone not used to the size.” 

The Boss ducked her head, “I had a halla back home. He was… very stubborn. She’s so gentle and sweet compared to him.”

“That’s the first time I’ve heard ‘gentle and sweet’ used in relation to my father’s horses.” The other woman grinned suddenly. “Do you want to race her?”

When Bull sketched the scene later, he wasn’t quite a skilled enough artist to capture the simple joy with which the Boss ran the races, but he carried the expression with him long after he’d dead-dropped the sketches for his contact to pick up.

—

The fourth time, he only sketched her hand. 

By the time he made the sketch, he’d seen her close half a dozen rifts and had dutifully reported back home what his observations had been. The mark had never appeared to pain her, but he had the feeling that it tingled sometimes, like the way the stumps of his fingers would after a long day’s fight. Phantom pain, more a mental thing than anything, but he saw her shake the limb once or twice if they’d had a particularly trying time of it. 

He’d never been able to see the mark up close, not that he really minded that one. The thing was unsettling, a faint green glow that she didn’t seem to be able to control or stop, that she tended to cover with gloves that she only removed as completely necessary. He caught himself wondering if she slept with the gloves on, toyed with whether or not she would tell him the truth if he asked. 

Not that any of that mattered by the time he was actually able to get a sketch of the mark itself.

They’d all been desperately glancing back as they walked, hoping against all evidence that she might come back, that she’d walk over the top of the rise behind them, that what they’d seen (she fell, Haven had burned and she’d fallen) was somehow not the end of the story. 

She’d walked out of the Fade after all, had sealed the Breach, had saved their lives. What was one more miracle after that?

And they’d looked behind even as they’d kept moving forwards, and it had been Cassandra who had seen the shape moving in the snow.

He and the Seeker and the Commander had raced out, his feet had carried him even before he’d consciously decided to go with them, and they’d found her, collapsed against the snow, hair haloing her head in a bright red contrast to all of the white. He’d reached down, scooped her up, cradled her against his chest.

Her lips were faintly blue, her skin faded and ashen, and he would always remember that as he held her close she hadn’t been shivering and her chest had only risen and fallen the barest of amounts. Her body was shutting down, even as he ran his hands along her arms to try and warm them, huddled himself around her so that she could take of his heat.

They’d put her in a tent, placed heated rocks wrapped in blankets around her, and covered her with layers of fur upon fur. They’d carefully warmed her hands and feet back up using first cold, then lukewarm water. Bull had even snuck a mouthful of his strongest whiskey down her throat when Giselle had been looking the other way, in an attempt to warm up her insides.

And now all they could do was wait and hope. 

He was currently seated next to her, eyes tracing her face as it slowly returned to it’s normal colour, her lips losing their blue and returning to a healthy pink. He found himself drawn to the tent, found himself sitting next to her as her breathing deepened and relaxed from unconsciousness into sleep, and as he looked at her he contemplated with a sort of wonder the smallness that seemed to cling to her when her timid vivacity was missing. She was tiny amongst the furs around her, and he found himself wondering at the strange twist of fate that had (literally) put the fate of the world in her remarkably small hands.

And in a fit of poetic daring (Or, more accurately, because the irony wouldn’t leave him alone once he’d thought of it) he decided to do a quick sketch of the mark - take the opportunity for the people back home.

He kept being distracted from his work, though, by the way her pale eyelashes fanned against her cheeks, how her breasts swelled with her gentle breaths, how her brow crinkled and then smoothed again every so often in response to what she was seeing in the fade. 

A hair fell across her face, and he brushed it away with a smile, all too aware at how she was such a strange friend for him to find, and wondering what her opinion would be on the matter if he asked her about it.

He never did finish the picture.

—

The fifth picture, he draws shortly after they discover Skyhold.

He drew it on a rare day that had dawned slightly brighter and warmer than the rest, when he and Krem were taking advantage of the warmer weather and moved their drinking outside.

He was watching the bustle of people coming and going as he drank from his tankard, and he saw the Inquisitor (And he’d called that one long ago, even if it had blindsided her) and Varric walking past, in the direction of the Lady Seeker’s training dummies. (And had Tethras been holding a book?) He raised an eyebrow as he tracked their passage, before turning to Krem and tilting his chin.

His second grinned and stood, stepping into the tavern to get another round.

By the time Krem returned, the Inquisitor was heading towards them with a smile on her face like a cat with a bowl of cream.

“Did the Seeker like her present?” Bull asked, as he kicked out a chair for her to sit on.

She laughed and sat. “Just once, would it kill you to pretend you don’t know everything I’m going to do before I do it?”

“Where would the fun be in that?”

“Hedonist.”

“Flatterer.”

She grinned and ducked her head, the very tips of her ears turning a faint pink.

And wasn’t that interesting?

It wasn’t like Bull hadn’t seen her flirt before- hell, she’d tried to flirt with him before- but the Inquisitor flirted as a way of expressing her friendship, to get a rise out of some (the Seeker sprung to mind) and to stroke the ego of others (and if that wasn’t the Vint all over). She seemed to do it for sheer entertainment value - and for someone so outwardly polite and unassuming, she had a wicked streak in her that only ever seemed to come out around those she trusted implicitly. That she counted Bull among those numbers had (at first) been surprising, but he hadn’t thought it had been any more than simple friendship.

The fact there might be a little bit more there was… definitely good to know.

Krem’s laugh rescued Lavellan before Bull could press the matter further. “I’m not sure which one of you is the worse influence on the other.” He put three flagons on the table in front of them, “Our lovely lady Inquisitor gets more bold every time she appears, and you, Chief, seem to have taken that as some sort of invitation to show off worse than usual.” 

“I don’t show off.” Bull said, mock hurt.

“So that’s exactly why you roar like a lunatic before charging the enemy, is it?” Whatever bashfulness had caught the herald had fled in the wake of Krem’s return, a crooked smile taking it’s rightful place as she raised an eyebrow at him.

“Intimidating the enemy isn’t showing off.”

“No? What about laughing maniacally and shouting ‘Did you see that?’ When you make a particularly vicious kill?”

Her impression of his voice was so awful that Krem choked on his ale and Bull had to slap him on the back until he could breathe again. “Bad as each other.” Krem repeated, when he could speak again.

Bull shook his head at the both of them, corners of his lips twitching with a smirk that was surprisingly difficult to repress.

The conversation after that was friendly, easy, and full of a verbal sparring to which he was becoming fast acquainted. The Inquisitor was easily giving as good as she got to Bull and Krem both, and he had a sudden strong need to introduce her to the rest of the Chargers, to see if she got along with them as well as she did with his second. He filed the idea away for later thought as they slowly drained their tankards, was a little bit disappointed when the Inquisitor politely refused a second cup.

“I’ve work to do,” she said by way of excuse, “Josephine has asked me to speak to her when I have a moment and I’ve really put it off too long as it is.” 

Bull tipped his empty tankard at her, Krem nodded and leant forward on the table. “See you later, then, Worship.” The young man said. Lavellan smiled at him and nodded at them both as she turned to walk away.

Bull let himself watch her, thoughtfully, which made Krem laugh again.

“She has you wrapped around her fingers, Chief.”

“You hit your head, Aclassi?” Bull asked.

His second seemed to find that even more amusing, “No, Chief.” Hs said, “But I do know she’s only swaying her hips like that because she knows you’re watching.”

“Well then.” Bull said, leaning back in his chair, “It’d be rude of me not to enjoy the show.”

He draws her later, the way her hair caught like fire in the sunlight, her tapered ears still faintly pink. He spends time focusing on that crooked grin of hers, that mix of delight and a razor wit, and then moves on to the gentle sweep of her vallaslin, the way it crinkled around the edges of her eyes with her amusement. 

He dusts the freckles across her face, tries to convey the fire and intelligence that’s hidden behind her eyes. He adds in Krem, too, a picture of the two of them at that table, drinking in the sun.

The picture is somehow displaced from his reports, and when he ‘finds’ it again after the dead drop is made, he tucks it into one of his belt’s many pouches and lets it stay there.

The qunari don’t need to know about every little thing, after all.

—

The final time he doesn’t draw her so much as draw on her. 

He has a tin of regular black paint in his hands, and though it’s not entirely the same consistency as vitaar and wouldn’t serve anywhere near the same purpose, poisoning the person you’re sleeping with is just rude. The paint is enough for him to work with, and for this purpose it’s perfect.

His kadan is still, standing in the centre of her tower room, not an inch of clothing on her. He lets himself admire her for a time, the swell of her breasts, small and pert and perfect, the freckles that grow less abundant on her muscled stomach, fading to almost nothing above the patch of downy red hair between her legs. He lets his eyes trace over the graceful bow of her collar bone, up to her face where her lip is caught between her teeth in a mix of nervousness and anticipation.

But she’s beautiful.

He steps towards her and kisses her on the mouth just the once, because she’s being so very good, staying perfectly still like he told her to. “Close your eyes.” He says against her lips, and with a tiny sigh she does so. He grins, sweeps his thumb over her vallaslin and takes a step back, picking up a brush from her desk and dipping it into the pot of paint. 

He starts at her breast, dotting the brush around her nipple, and she flinches slightly at it, mouth coming open in a gasp. “Creators, that’s cold.”

He chuckles, moving the brush along her skin, as she trembles with the need to fidget. “How did you manage to keep still enough for your vallaslin, Kadan, if you keep flinching at this?”

“It’s… different.” She says, eyes still closed, and he notices her fists clench with the need to stay still. “That was all about pain tolerance, making the pain part of you, embracing - ” The rest of the sentence is lost in a yelp as he brings the brush back to her skin and she jerks away.

“This,” she says, when she can speak again, “is just ticklish.”

She sounds so offended at the last, that he can’t help but let out another chuckle. “Stay still.” He warns her, again, and he can see the effort it takes her as she does. “You know what happens if you move again.”

She trembles at that, lip sneaking between her teeth again, the nipple near his brush pebbling as he starts drawing an intricate, swirling pattern through the dots. 

The sigil he’s drawing is one for speed, and he trails the brush down her stomach, watching her muscles twitch and jump, enjoying immensely all the little noises that he manages to wring from her with just brush and paint alone. She yelps again when the brush dips into her navel, but this time she doesn’t flinch, stays perfectly still.

Still, he’s not cruel enough to test her any further, and skirts away from lower areas for now.

He follows the speed sigil with one for cunning, wending it over her shoulder and down her arm to her fingertips, spends so long on it she almost relaxes until he moves around her and brings the brush back down along the side of her neck. She goes rigid at this, her fists clench and her toes curl, but she manages to stay still as he works, and he kisses the back of her neck in praise of her. 

He writes elusiveness and evasion into the patterns over her back, luck at the point where her spine meets her ass. This one makes her jump and he slaps her, sharply, on her ass for it, bringing a high whining note from her throat that shoots straight to his groin. 

“Is it too much?” He asks, because she’s reacting much more to this than he expected her to, and so far in this, he’s only ever given her orders he believes she can follow.

She shakes her head. “I’m fine.” She says, and even though she sounds breathless and strained, he dips his brush back into the paint and continues.

Strength, he puts down her other arm, stealth he paints in dark shadows across her feet and legs, winding the patterns over her hips. Finally, he places protection just above her heart, moving the pattern out over the breast he left bare before, trailing it up her neck and to meet the corners of her vallaslin, which mean protection in a different script.

He steps back and looks at her, at the promises he has written onto her skin. “Open your eyes.” He says, and she does, her pupils blown wide, breath coming in quick pants. 

He’s struck suddenly by affection for her, warm and deep and strong. There’s probably something in the qun about how he shouldn’t have done this, but if it’s sacrilege he doesn’t care because she’s so beautiful with the lines over her skin, the freckles shining through.

“You were so good.” He says to her, stepping forward and placing his hands on either side of her face, drawing her into a deep kiss. She responds eagerly, her hands coming up to his chest, leaning into him, and he feels the paint smearing under his hands as he drags them down her arms, slips them about her waist and picks her up easily. Her legs come up around him for support, he tips her backwards onto the bed and proceeds to thoroughly ruin the rest of his work, and her sheets, in one fell swoop.


End file.
